How to Choose Blogging Niche of your New Blog?

Starting a Blog is fun but the tough part is sticking to a Topic. Many of us, who are new to Blogging, ends up writing on one topic and then jumping to another one. Something like, you write about latest smartphone today, next day you talk about health and later you talk about Politics and so on. This kind of setup has it’s own problem and you will fail to attract the targeted audience. When ever we talk about Blogging niche, in simple words it means: Topic of your Blog.

For example, ShoutMeLoud is a Blog for Bloggers and Internet marketers. It’s niche is Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, WordPress, SEO and so on. I know it sounds like many topics, but if you look closely all are part of online marketing and internet. Similarly, your blog need to have a niche from day one and in this article, I will help you to choose the Niche of your Blog.

Few tips to Decide Niche of your Blog

Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm

What are the topics that interest you? Cricket? Bollywood? Country music? Make a list of all of the topics that are interesting to you. Don’t worry about the length of the list at this stage. It can also contain 20 different ideas.

Passion vs Profit

“But shouldn’t I be blogging about the hottest topics? Things everyone is googling?” Hmm. Good point. For example technology is something people all over the world are googling like crazy (No wonder 90% of the top Indian blogs are tech blogs owned by geeks from the IT dungeons! Like this one. :D No Harsh, ‘geek’ is not a bad word. Especially if it nicely puts you in the chair of India’s top 5 bloggers, but I’ll stop rambling now.).

But you’re a lit grad with zero interest or expertise in technology. Should you start a tech blog just because it’s the hot thing? Sure if you put in the hours you’ll be able to find enough information on technology to blog about. But achieving blogging success is a long process.

You will get three visitors per day for the first three months. You’ll be scourging the Web for blogs in your niche, reading them (no you can’t fake it) and making meaningful comments on them. Are you sure you’ll be able to do all this day in and day out, without fail, besides producing quality content, on a topic that’s NOT interesting to you, for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years?

So rule #1: Don’t include topics that don’t interest you, in the list of possible topics.

Cricket or how to take care of the hair of my German Shepherd?

So you’ve got your list of interesting topics and cricket tops the list. You just eat cricket, sleep cricket, dream cricket. So should you just go ahead and start your cricket blog? There’s a tiny problem with that. Maybe you’ll have a bit of competition from cricinfo.com. And cricketnext.in. And OneIndia Cricket. Okay, so you strike off cricket understanding the competitive scene. Now what? You go straight to another favorite topic of yours-taking care of the hair of a German Shepherd.
You do a Google search. Yes! There’s zero competition in India. So can you go ahead and create your blog on the German Shepherd thing? Think again.

There’s zero competition, but what about the demand? Will sufficient number of people be Googling it every month? Yes, you’ve guessed it right. The key is to strike a balance among your interest, the popular trends and level of competition. I chose love and relationships as my niche because I was always passionate about improving people’s lives through inner development and no dedicated information-based Indian sites existed in the love-and-relationships domain (unbelievable I know).

Then I made my proposition even more unique by adding sections like free counseling, dedications and complete your love story. But there’s a bit more to my story. More about that later.

Does my niche have long-term potential?

‘Current events’ is an area which is obviously very high on popularity. It may also be high on your interest levels. But don’t start a blog site called www.westbengalelections2011.com – something that’ll cease to hold public attention for long enough for you to make any money! Choose a topic which is timeless.

Why would people listen to me?

So now you’ve narrowed down your list to 3 to 4 topics, based on the above criteria. Now you have to think in which of these topics you can offer something unique. It may be domain knowledge (think Amit Aggarwal and technology), experience (travelling extensively is the only qualification that you need for a travel blog) or even plain writing style (the popular personal blogs in India).

In my case it was a combination of the second and the third. I had already been through a string of wrong relationships, when I met a charming man, who soon turned out to be an abuser and eventually the relationship took me to the brink of not completing my MBA. This catastrophic affair was a life-changing experience for me which made me realize many truths about life and stop getting into wrong relationships permanently. Since then I had dedicated myself to helping people in similar circumstances as mine by giving them the information, advice and support that I so badly needed in the past but didn’t find.

At the moment I’m also in the process of getting proper education in psychology so that I’m better able to help people.

So in nutshell, when you choose your blogging niche, you think of long term. You pick a topic that you can constantly write about and at the same time you love reading about to enhance your knowledge. Blogging is not only about Knowledge sharing, but it’s also educating yourself and getting better understanding in your niche. Here is one more articles for further reading and to help you in deciding your next Blog niche:

Well thanks for sharing this infotmative peice. I have some personal experience being a new-bie. Since without much knowledge i bought handfull of donains as found them pleasant but they are now useless since i don’t know in what niche i should place. But i guess this would definitely give a clear idea for new bie like me. Wondering i would have a much greater blogging year if would have know about niche a year back.

Great post! I’m curious – if we decide we really want to create a blog about “shy college students” or other niches that don’t have a high CPC or expensive products to sell, can we still make money in that niche if we have a true passion (and even a bit of expertise) in that topic?

Hello, I have read lots of post on choosing a better niche for a blog. And found, in most of them that, the niche should be the one which you love to read, love to know and research. So, I concluded with “Blogging and SEO” as my niche, but now I am little bit afraid about my earning, will it be profitable? Please Reply

@Lalit
Blogging and SEO is very profitable niche. ShoutMeLoud is a live example of this. I make over $4000 from ShoutMeLoud by blogging on the same niche. Do remember, rely on affiliate marketing and build your email list from day one.

Nice points, Sualgna. But one has to think not only in terms of pure interest but interest with the knowledge. In fact on should look explore what is his/her core strength, what area do you have most expertise. Unless, you don’t have enough knowledge and expertise about the subject, you will not be successful as a blogger even if you have a very high interest in that area. For example, we find many people in india who are hard core fan of Cricket but if we think that they can be a good blogger and can write very good about cricket subject, then it may not be true. Quite surprisingly, there would be very few who have the vast background, knowledge about cricket even if they may not be missing a single match to watch. Most often, our interest would mean and be restricted to just usage part and not necessarily mean being knowledgable about the subject. So, if you happen to pick up the topic for your blog purely on interest basis then most often you may find yourself in “lack of words” kind of position after some time. Interest coupled with expertise, however, can go a long way in the blogging career.

As you and Mahesh have rightly said, and I’ve mentioned in the last point “Why should people listen to me”, domain expertise is crucial.
However there are some fields where you can gather your material from your experience, or just your judgement. For example blogs on movie reviews, poetry, travel etc. are more dependent on the ability and experience of the blogger than proper education in the concerned field. Thank you for chiming in. :)

You’re absolutey right Mahesh. The first requirement is domain expertise. Now among the domains in which you already have expertise, the PPC rates can determine which niche you choose for blogging.
Thank you for the comment. :)

Nice article Sulagna.
Today niche websites are making boom. Everyone wants to take a ride of this niche profit (?) business. But I too feel if you are the early bird grabbing the niche market first you will be king in long term.

Well very good info. I like the thing passion Vs Profit. Yes IM is biggest learning curve of online business. I don’t say that every body is IT geeks. But yes understanding of seo, content and niche is necessary to be successful in blogging/IM.

I think 2 of the reasons that tech blogs are ultra successful in India are that 1. A large percentage of the Indian online population are techies, which is starting to change only recently as more an more “common men” gain access to the Internet. 2. As you’ve rightly mentioned techies understand the technical aspects like SEO , how SEs work, and a relatively better understanding of a website in general.
Thanks for commenting Rahul.

Interesting article. We don’t try choose that topic in which we are having a lack of interest. Lack of interest directly means to lack of traffic. You can also choose topics other than technology, gadgets like traveling, hospitality, medicines, etc.

That’s true! as nowadays every newbie starts up with tech blog domain and soon they forgot their niche and start writing about Wordpress and SEO tips.

Even the bigger blogs are loosing niche, perfect example is pluggd.in (they frequently posts about mobiles, tablets and even manual reviews that mostly contains only device specs) while, their tag line is “We heart startups.”

In my view it’s better leave technology (because web is almost flooded with these sort of weblogs) and choose something you really love and the most important one, always stuck to your niche!